How to Optimize Yourself and Your Business For Peak Performance (Episode 183)

Jeff Bullas

00:00:04 - 00:01:23

Hi everyone, it's the Jeff Bullas’ podcast, The Jeff Bullas Show. Welcome to it and wherever you're dialing in or viewing from anywhere in the world in this world of zooming. So today I have with me Kelsey March, Kelsey is a High Performance coach that helps six plus figure agency owners optimize their performance and streamline their business operations so they can reduce stress, increase time, freedom and grow sustainably. Her roots lie initially in the psychology field, having worked in-clinical inpatient psychiatry for six years alongside additional roles involving backend business admin ranging legal services, hospital organizations, Airbnb and much more. She initially stepped into entrepreneurship to build a life of true financial and time freedom for herself. She found that many other successful entrepreneurs intend to do the same only to really step into another path of burnout and stress. She is a blogger, a Behavioral Specialist that coaches practical, positive psychology, a vagabond traveler, a foodie, an animal lover and a nature enthusiast because she started life in Illinois, USA but spent most of her adult life in Wisconsin, USA. She's now currently living in Chicago, if I dialed in next week we might find her in a Roadhouse in Australian Outback. Welcome to the show, Kelsey.

Kelsey March

00:01:24 - 00:01:28

Thank you so much for such a wonderful welcome, Jeff.

Jeff Bullas

00:01:29 - 00:02:07

So the term digital nomad crosses my mind and the world of digital business, which you can, you know, run meetings on Zoom, you can, you know, have software in the cloud, you can have, you know, contracted or employees all around the world that you found through, you know, different platforms. So Kelsey, you went and did clinical psychiatry. Let's go back there first, right? So what made you get into clinical psychiatry?

Kelsey March

00:02:08 - 00:04:26

Yeah, gosh. Well, so there's a couple different aspects. When I, the thing that actually made me fall in love with psychology, I had been studying abroad in my sophomore year and the very first psychology class I took was, and it was in Spanish, it was the psychology of learning a second language and I fell in love. I fell in love with the process, the systems and the way that we develop languages and the way that we learn things and I was sold. And so I was like, I got to get into psychology and so I started taking courses and it also ended up giving me a lot of insights into my own life. Unfortunately, I kind of had a pretty rough upbringing. Things were most of the time unstable in my home to the point where I ended up being on my own at 16. And yeah, and I was very lucky, a friend and her family took me in to finish high school but I was a hard ass student and I like I had a job since I was 14, I was in all the school stuff, I was doing all the things that were expected of me. But life was not so easy just when it came to what was happening with my family and my personal environment. And so when I started to discover things in psychology, like, oh, this makes sense, you know, so and so in my family was struggling with bipolar disorder and oh, this is what alcoholism is and all these things that gave me some nice clarity and insight and to understand what my history and my narrative was and I didn't necessarily, you know, go into psychology to heal those things for that reason, but it definitely gave me a kickstart and I really enjoyed the science behind psychology and how we can focus on the mind and the body and to bring the two together to like heal and move forward. And so I got really interested in clinical psych where those are a lot more acute disorders. So dealing with people who have severe depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, all this stuff. And I ended up being a mental health specialist in a hospital and I fell in love with the work. I absolutely enjoyed it but it is a hard job. So at some point I decided I wanted to break and that's how I ended up on my next chapter of traveling.

Jeff Bullas

00:04:26 - 00:04:48

Right. So, alright. So you've decided to move on, you've done six years. And so what was the motivation or event that made you go, I wanna travel now? And second question you can answer next is where was the pin on the map?

Kelsey March

00:04:49 - 00:06:49

Yeah, okay. So there's a couple, alright. So I studied abroad. It was my first time leaving the country. My sophomore year of college and I was in Spain. I also got a degree eventually in Spanish as well. And I fell in love. I loved the idea and this was peak. I was in the middle of still a lot of, you know, BS with my family and all that stuff. So I was just away and I got to experience a culture that was different from my own. I got to see through a different perspective, try new things and it was just very eye opening and it was a like a whirlwind experience that I was like, this is awesome. There's a lot of other ways to live out the world. And so I knew after graduating, I was like, okay, I'm gonna do all the things that society expects of me. I'm gonna, you know, get the degrees, I'm gonna have the big girl job, I'm gonna pay off all my debt, I'm gonna get my years of experience. And then before I continue on with my career, I want to go do some extensive traveling. And so I did all the things I was actually supposed to only be gone about a year or two and come back to do my PhD and that obviously didn't happen. When it came to where I was going in the world, I wanted to start somewhere that was English speaking just because it was my first time, truly solo traveling. And so that's how I ended up in Australia and I did the holiday working visa. And I did that and I had such a wonderful experience. I wanted to keep traveling and that's how I kind of started to get and that's why I never returned. And I discovered, you know, the world of online work. And so I wasn't just for the record, I was not a digital nomad. That's not how I started out. I did create a digital business, but I still to this day don't really consider myself a digital nomad. I'm very much so that long term slow traveler, I post up in the country for as long as I can and you know, get to know the people, the food, the culture, enjoy that. And then, you know, do some sightseeing and things around that and then move on to the next place, but much more slow.

Jeff Bullas

00:06:50 - 00:07:28

Yeah, that's awesome. Oh, I'm sorry, so do you have a checklist like, you know, if you say I'm gonna stay here for two or three months or whatever the time is. Is there a certain sort of like template or pre-requirements or prerequisites you need to actually start this place? Like, does it need a veranda? Is it Airbnb? It needs to be walking distance to a, you know, a convenience store? I don't know, what some of the checklist that you have as an experienced traveler that you go looking for?

Kelsey March

00:07:29 - 00:09:46

Okay, alright, gosh. So, just to start for the record, most of the places that I have ended up in have been on a whim. It was not because it was a long, it was a to-do list of I want to hit this country and do this thing. It was because someone recommended it in a forum on Facebook and they're like, this place is a hit in gem. And I was like sold, I'm gonna go and so that's how I ended up in places. That's how I ended up in Indonesia and Vietnam, Malaysia. That's also how I ended up in Colombia. So I didn't really have like concrete plans and it wasn't like I'm going and I'm staying for six months. It was more like I'm gonna go and see how do I like it and if I enjoy it and if it's great I'll stay for a longer period of time. But there is definitely a checklist for when traveling that I have things that I want to make sure I do have like, you know, dietary restrictions, stuff like that, but I'm always about like, first I want to get the lay of the land. So I typically do a hostel of some sort or like a co-working place where I can meet other people who can help me get the lay of the land and we can go out and explore together and in that time, I then start searching for a long term living accommodation. You just gotta be diligent in doing your research, certain places you want to make sure you're not in some kind of shady neighborhoods, you wanna make sure maybe you have access to if you want to be involved in the expat community of other foreigners that are there where you're closer to certain local, whether it's local food, grocery, malls, whatever is most prominent in the culture because it's different from place to place. So yeah, and making sure that I can, I know where can I grocery shop, what's my means of transportation, all that good stuff. So there is definitely a list that you check off, especially as a female and a solo female traveler. I always like, want to make sure safety is the number one for me. And I haven't had any issues. I just make sure I know my lay of the land and I start with trying to build that community first. Then finding my own place in most places I rented like a studio apartment and I've lived in a studio by myself after I kind of did the initial like meeting people at like a hostel or a co-working place. So yeah, it's kind of, it's not the most clear answer. I would have to like write out the actual stuff because I've never written that out before. That's not normally what I work with people.

Jeff Bullas

00:09:46 - 00:10:42

Well, I'm just interested because the whole digital nomads, this sort of romantic notion and the reality is creating a routine. This is maybe a good segue to move into and we've used the term systems processes, you know, so you got personal routines, people have like, what's your daily routine? What's your morning routine? So you've been, okay, so let's talk about that in a minute. But I just, I'm curious about, okay, so you're doing the traveling, then you're gonna go, well, I am now, you're curious about psychiatry, how people work, what motivates people, I'm sure. So what got you into performance coaching and personal coaching? So what got you into that? What was there aha moment or how did it happen?

Kelsey March

00:10:43 - 00:15:28

Well, pretty much my whole life was the aha moment. So, the thing that I, when I first discovered coaching and I got into coaching, I didn't know anything about it. And I've got a pretty good background coming from psych that sets me up well for that coaching ability for other people and being able to listen and empathize and then I'm also on this other side, I've got that type, a structure systems that I've learned when I've done in other business admin areas and things. And I just found that, based on my life, I find that we aren't really taught how to manage ourselves. We're not taught how to manage our emotions, our thoughts, our behaviors. And there's a difference when you work in acute psychology, a lot of people when they're really, really sick, yes, they want to be better. But two, they're not always, they're in such a low spot. They're not always motivated to be doing that work or even want to be doing that work because they're so deep in their mental illness, which there's, you know, that just means that they need a specific type of support and care. I was really interested in helping people who were motivated to cultivate mental wellness on the other side. So what people don't realize is that mental health lies on the spectrum, you have mental illness on one side and mental wellness on the other. But just because you don't have mental illness, that doesn't mean you have mental wellness. You have to actually cultivate that in your life. You have to build resilience. And when I started dabbling in coaching, I didn't really know exactly who I was gonna work with, what worked for me. I found that talking about resiliency and really teaching people how to show up for themselves and create systems and routines so that they can be at the best performance that they want to be. And I'm not talking about always being on points and always like, you know, being top of your game, but just enough where you have the solid systems and routines to take care of yourself when you are facing difficult setbacks and roadblocks. But also that are there to help elevate you in terms of productivity and mental clarity and all of that. And I found that wanting to help people to learn how to be resilient in life because I'm just gonna say it like life sometimes sucks. It's rough. Like there's always going to be issues, there's always going to be challenges and like I said, most of us are not taught how to deal with this. And so learning how to be resilient in the face of things and to really take care of ourselves for what we need. I found that business owners were motivated to learn these skills because in doing so, learning how to be resilient and how to take care of themselves, really created the ultimate performance that they needed to build their business, to run their business. And something I just want to circle back to because you were talking about like, oh being a digital nomad can be really hard, right? In terms of setting those routines and those systems, I would say, the digital nomads that I met who were business owners, not people who were working remotely for other companies because they are a huge bulk of digital nomads are people who are working for other companies or they're working on a remote team. The ones that were business owners, they were people who in order to move around at a frequency of three months at a time, which is what a lot of digital nomads do based on visa schedules. They had to have their shit together, they had to have that. Their operations needed to be completely systematized and it needed to either be automated or delegated and for the most part off of their plate. And then they also have really clear systems and routines for themselves as the business owner. And I will say I did not meet many people like that. I didn't meet a lot of business owners who are at that level doing that. I found that every time, you know, you move to a new country, you have a dip in your productivity or what you're doing and you kind of like lose your footing. So, yeah, I just wanted to emphasize that, but altogether that's kind of why I got into it. I wanted to help people achieve the things that they wanted to do because they had this dream of whether it's creating time, freedom, financial freedom, whatever it is or just to own something of their own and want to believe in themselves. But then to be resilient when it got hard and then to still take care of themselves in the process, I think our society is so it's very, at least in America, it's very hell bent on like you need to keep producing, you need to produce, you need to be on top of it, making money, continue to achieve, achieve, achieve. And there's no, I don't wanna say balance, but there's no harmony between being a person and like working.

Jeff Bullas

00:15:28 - 00:16:13

Yeah. That's very interesting to make an observation about, I suppose the American culture in terms of, I suppose almost mercenary capitalism, that actually forgets about the human in the middle of that. So wellness is basically almost forgotten, okay, still. So, and everything comes down to, I've got to have a routine that's like a robot. I've got to do gym for half an hour. I've got to run for half an hour. I've got to do this at this time. So life becomes almost like a machine. Human almost becomes roboticized. And that's not how to live as a human, is it?

Kelsey March

00:16:14 - 00:18:27

No, not at all. And I think that's where this is a great concept in psychology and this is all humans, whether it's America or elsewhere. We have this all or nothing mindset, which is why like habit formation is so hard. We see it all the time. Someone's like New Year's, new habits, new me, I'm gonna work out seven days a week and like, I'm gonna do this for a full month and like make it happen and they'll maybe do the first seven days and then they miss a day and then they're like, oh, well, I kind of fucked it all up. So now I've like given up on my goal. I failed, I've screwed it up. I can't keep going and then the people return back to their old behaviors because they are setting expectations that are unrealistic. It's about, yeah, it's about realizing what is it that we need to feel good on a regular basis and what's the bare minimum we can do to maintain that. And just, and the system in the routine isn't meant to like, be rigid structure that you have to abide by. It's meant to create support. So, for example, when bad things happen, if we already have a system and routine that was in place. We get thrown off emotionally, mentally. It can be really hard to have the motivation to show up and to do things. But if I know every morning when I wake up, maybe I'm not waking up at 6AM like I was originally doing, but I'm waking up at 9AM. I know that for me, it's best if I brush my teeth, I let the dogs out and I do some deep breathing exercises for five minutes. Nothing really extensive, but it helps to regulate my nervous system. And I know how much that matters for me because I run on the anxious side and right now kind of in the middle of some life bullshit, right? Like that's so maybe the system that was there in place. But now it's become a consistent habit that like supports us when we need it most and by doing it regularly, it also has other benefits, right? By regulating my nervous system and gives me clear executive functioning, which also gives me the energy and the clear mind to show up and problem solve in my business every day, right? So it works on both sides, the firefighting and the proactive, you know, taking care of myself and running my business.

Jeff Bullas

00:18:28 - 00:19:39

Yeah. So I do like you mentioned about routine, giving you a structure and I think we've got to be careful not to create a rigid structure that sets you up for failure, but a good framework that supports you when times get tough and creates good habits like I'm going to read in the morning for an hour because I work in the knowledge industry, I'm then going to take notes as I do that. Then I might say, well, I'm just gonna meditate for 20 minutes or do breathing, then it might be, well, I'm gonna walk to the beach or I'm gonna go for a walk in nature and then I'll start my, you know, business day at a certain time or around that time or if you're a writer, you're gonna dedicate, you know, 90 minutes to writing, two hours to writing. So, and then this because it as humans, we're complex, aren't we? There's many elements that add to wellness. So do you have a framework for wellness that as humans and your psychiatry background? What are some key elements that you think we need to look after that are absolutely vital?

Kelsey March

00:19:40 - 00:23:01

Yeah. So to be honest, it's nothing magical and it's everything that we see on online, on Instagram, on whatever we're basically house plants with complicated emotions we need just to create our own healthy greenhouse. So typically what I do with my business owners when I work with them one-to-one, we always start with the personal performance. And I think we were discussing this before we hopped on, our businesses are top down, right? It comes from the business owner and then everything that comes after that comes from the business owner. So we want to focus on them first as a person get a couple of things in order and then we can focus on the actual systems and structures of the business. But to start with that wellness component, first you want to do a time audit, you wanna get a sense of exactly where are you spending your time and where are you putting your energy and your activity, right? Are you waking up and spending an hour and a half on Instagram scrolling? Like are you skipping breakfast? Are you, I don't know, inside all day, do an audit of exactly what you're doing for three to four days. It doesn't have to be perfect, but it will create a heavy dose of self awareness which a lot of people need. So start with doing a time audit and then getting an idea of, you know, what the core areas that we want to focus on is emotion management, energy management and mindset management. These are the three core areas. So if we start with energy, basically, we need to look at how are you taking care of yourself as if you were like a kid. Are you getting eight hours of sleep? I always start with sleep. Where's your sleep at? Do we have a consistent bedtime? And do we have a consistent wake up time? Now, this is where people get into like that rigidity and they can make a mistake. It's like, well, I'm going to bed at one in the morning. I want to be going to bed at 10 at night. So I'm gonna try to start doing that immediately. No, we start small steps, right? We identify what you're doing and then we just push it maybe by 30 minutes and see if you can consistently show up and hit that for a week. Oh, you did that, great job. Let's push in another 15 minutes, do that consistently for a week and then see what happens. So it's all done in small steps with very reasonable expectations. The goal is, hey, if you could do this for three to four times out of the week, the ultimate goal is maybe five to six. But if you could do it for at least three, you're it's all comes down to how we talk for ourselves in the process. But so for that energy management, it's, you know, are you getting enough sleep? Are you getting enough energy from nutrients? Right? For a lot of women, especially business owners and I work with both men and women. Men are a little bit different because they tend to handle fasting better. But women, they skip breakfast and then they find that they have low energy in the afternoon, they're irritable, they can't think as clearly in their morning or even in their evening. And so the meal structure is really, really important. So sleep, eating and then when we move to emotion management, what are you doing to take care of your body? To take care of like, how you're feeling? I'm really big on breath work really short, minimal exercises that help to regulate our nervous system. Like a very good example of square breathing. You can do it in five minutes, do it once a day. It works wonders. It's the number one thing I have all of my business owners do and after two weeks they all come back and they're like, yeah, it's a game changer. It really helps and then they stick with it.

Jeff Bullas

00:23:01 - 00:23:03

So what's square breathing?

Kelsey March

00:23:04 - 00:25:34

Square breathing is abdominal breathing in through your nose, out through your nose. But it's where you're inhaling for the count. Let's say the count of five. You're holding for the count to five, you're exhaling for the count to five and then holding for the count to five. So five, it's just a square. I believe, I don't know if it was created but it became popular when it was used by the marines because it's helped to, it actively moves you from your ergonomic nervous state, which is that activated fight, flight, freeze. What we know as like super activation from that state of our nervous system to the parasympathetic state, which is the relaxed state. And so being able to consciously work on your nervous system and to help manage it throughout, you know, your day, your week, it's a game changer. It helps you to show up with a better state of mind, it can help with sleep, it can help with a whole bunch of other things. So when we're looking at it, right? If we're gonna go back and recover where we've got the time audit to get a sense of self awareness of where you're at, then we want to manage your energy. So looking at your sleep and your eating habits and making sure you're watering yourself like a plant, you're getting enough water. We've got emotion management, which comes down to a lot of nervous system and stress regulation, a couple other things for that is body movement. So there is a lot to be said for getting ourselves out into sunlight and getting that sunlight first thing in the morning and just moving your body going for a walk 20-30 minutes a day or doing an exercise in your house, if going outside isn't feasible, still moving your body, especially if you're sitting at a desk all day. And then there's that mindset management. Like what are you doing to help, you know, process your emotions to reflect on the things, things that you are doing and to give acknowledgement as you are taking on daily life and daily running of a business, a lot of practises that I think of. There's just I used to call it word vomit journaling, but it's made basically kind of just putting brain dumping your thoughts onto paper. But then there's also some things like gratitude, which you could do a very simplistic gratitude practice to acknowledge, you know, what am I grateful for today to keep you in that and I'm not saying that you need to always be in a positive mindset, but to help you see the positive in a situation instead of automatically always going to the negative. As I said, life sucks and sometimes we need a little bit of a tool to help us not get stuck in the suck basically.

Jeff Bullas

00:25:35 - 00:25:40

So the three, again, are energy management, time management and, what was the other one?

Kelsey March

00:25:41 - 00:25:43

Energy management, mindset management, and emotion management.

Jeff Bullas

00:25:44 - 00:26:28

Okay, alright. So that's where you start when you're doing coaching. Where do you go next? So basically, you're starting with setting them up to do some small things, which is a great book which I've read called Atomic Habits. In other words, don't try and, you know, become, you know, perfect straight away. It's like just little steps, isn't it? So it's really not that we ever become perfect by the way. But yeah, start with small habits, small changes. Okay. So, what's next when you're taking them through that? So, what's next for them?

Kelsey March

00:26:29 - 00:30:11

So next for them would be then looking at their personal work flows which comes down to that time and task management. So, what exactly are they working on when it comes to their business? What are the tasks that they're tackling every single day? And how are they dedicating their time to that? I find a lot of business owners when they wear all the hats, right? They've done such a good job to get their business off of the ground. They're getting that consistent cash flow. A lot of them are at a point where they have some team members or some contractors, or they don't have that yet, but they're wearing all the hats and all the different departments from doing their marketing, their prospecting, their sales, their onboarding, their fulfillment, their off boarding, all of that. They're doing bits and pieces of everything and then not to mention the back end of finance and admin. And I find that they don't have any structure around that. So they just kind of take things as they come. They're like, oh, this thing is due today, so I need to work on it. They have maybe a little bit of past management knowing that this client's big project is due in three weeks and they've got some of it parsed out. But they don't really have dedicated times in their own workflow. So this applies back to energy management. When do you do your best deep, like deep focus work? A lot of business owners is in the morning. So maybe let's close out your schedule so that you only have meetings. One, you need one ideally two full days of no meetings where you're not interacting with other clients, taking sales calls, discovery calls, all that sort of stuff. You get two full days to work on what you need to between client fulfillment work and you're on the business work. But if we know that you still have to be doing stuff those other days, you do better deep work in the morning, black out the morning time so that your afternoons can be stacked with meetings. Let's just say Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. You've got Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday mornings, free for deep work. And we've got Mondays and Fridays also free and it's also a matter of like theme blocking, right? For me, I know I do constant organic marketing with content and I do my content production on Fridays and Mondays and that is ready for the next coming week. I also know that I hate doing all of my lead generation in terms of like messaging and constantly clearing my inboxes. So for me, it's one of the first tasks of the day that I have to do. I bang it out in one hour, I'm done, right? Just because I know that if, and this is a big one for a lot of business owners. They are really right. They've done such a good job. They're doing the fulfillment and they focus on the fulfillment. But in order to get stuck out of this, like rock and a hard place, like they want to grow their business and make more money, but they don't have the bandwidth to do it because everything is on their plate. And they also want to have a life outside of this, but they can't do that because they're doing everything they can to help their baby be where it needs to be as a business. So they have no time, no time quotation marks for those who can't watch this. They say they have no time to work on the business, which is where it's like working on those systems and figuring out what can you document like what processes can you document and then what can you templatize and systematize and eventually either automate or delegate because that's what's ultimately gonna build a business that you can sell, that you can have run in the background or that it can be doing what it needs to do. And you get to focus on the fun parts and then also have a life outside of it. So for your next question, it goes for that time and task management for the business owner. And then we start moving into documenting processes of what's actually happening in the business. And then from there, there's that templatization, that systemization and then moving into automation and delegation.

Jeff Bullas

00:30:12 - 00:30:36

Yeah. So it's very important for a lot of entrepreneurs. They come up with the idea, they're a little bit, you know, freewheeling, you know, got lots of ideas then they get trapped in doing it all themselves. But you got to fall in love with the process, not just fall in love with the actual idea of the business. And it does give you freedom when you put together systems and processes, doesn't it?

Kelsey March

00:30:36 - 00:31:07

Yeah. No, it's the key. So just like we need systems and processes for ourselves as a human being, like to make it easy to show up and take care of our body and get some body movement to make sure we're getting the right amount of sleep and we're feeding ourselves and we're taking care of our wellness. It's the same idea for our business. You need systems and routines to have it be a well oiled machine and to make sure that it's continually cycling the way that it needs to without it being fully dependent on you.

Jeff Bullas

00:31:08 - 00:31:52

Yeah. So in terms of performance coaching, so you're basically getting, I suppose creating frameworks for the individual, routines for the individual, routines for the business. So what's next after that to help businesses grow or is it because you get them in the right mindset? They, it happens naturally. So what's the next steps after you've set the, I suppose the right foundations, you've done the audit, you've started making changes to your own personal routine that supports the business. These, you do the document, you do processes and systems. So the business start working, they start delegating. So what's next or is it just an ongoing organic evolution?

Kelsey March

00:31:53 - 00:33:55

So it's a little bit of the organic evolution. But so basically, when I have clients who I work with, it's usually about the six month mark of us working together that we get all of like, well oiled, kinds of systems and routines, both personally and within the business. At this point, typically, what we see is we're able to, we've cut their time down in half in the terms of what they're putting into the business. I've replicated this with multiple clients. So we cut their time down in half, we've cut their stress down in quite a bit. Usually they, when I start with them, they're around an eight or a nine out of 10 for like high levels of stress. And we usually get them down to about a consistent two or three. And then pretty much always we're able to double or triple their income because we're focused on the right priorities in the business. And then from there now they're like, okay, I've got, I've been able to triple what, I'm, well, let me rephrase that not income, revenue in the business. We've been able to triple, like double or triple the revenue. And so now they're like, okay, I've got all this wiggle room. I've got the time. I've also got the cash coming in. What do I wanna do? I have some people who are really happy in that sweet spot. They want to take some time to go traveling, they wanna go do other things outside of their business. There's other fun projects that they wanted to start. Then I've got people who are like, I want to start another arm of my business, I want to build a course, I want to try this new vertical with the same offer but a different industry. Certain things like that and if it's a project that they want help in terms of project management and organization and staying on top of their personal stuff while now taking on a new endeavor, they keep me on or we take a break, we have a lull, they could check in with me monthly and then when they want to ramp up on something again, they bring me back to help them get organized and have the right like prioritization of what they need while also managing their personal needs while they're within the project or whatever it is, they're skating. So it's a little mix of both.

Jeff Bullas

00:33:55 - 00:34:08

So do you also see yourself as accountability coach? In other words, they check in with you every week and you check in to see if they've actually done their homework. How does that work?

Kelsey March

00:34:09 - 00:36:05

Yeah. So, I mean, accountability is 100% part of what I do. But I'm the one that's also creating the strategy for them based on what they're telling me. So I'm sure, you know, this, a lot of business owners have shiny objects and drugs and see something shiny and they want to run with it. There's a new thing with AI or there's this or that. But they told me what their goals are and what they want to stay on top of. And so I'm here to help keep them on track with that and to bring them back to it. Is this what we should be prioritizing? But in terms of how, like, I guess what my coaching actually looks like we do meet weekly and we talk about, you know, what is the things that we're working on? They get a very clear focus guide that's written up after every single session. So it's a very personalized guide of what's expected of them between then and our next meeting because we take everything by like a week by week basis. We do have an overarching picture which we have mapped out in the beginning of the coaching, but then we focus on taking that action consistently week by week and then addressing when we meet the next week and shit didn't happen. I'm like, okay, so let's talk about why this didn't happen. What got in the way? What do we need to work on? Usually a lot of the time, it's a mindset thing and they just were getting in their head about it and then they push it off. Because news alerts, procrastination is not a time management issue. Procrastination is an emotional management issue because people are scared, they're scared of failure of success, whatever it may be. So we, they do get this like personally, it, my coaching is very personalized to bit from business owner to business owner, but it also has that clear pathway and that structure of these are the things we're gonna work on from that personal performance to the back end operations to then give you the opportunity to focus on whatever else you want to. But yeah, that accountability definitely comes in the form of written documents and then I'm in touch with them throughout the week and then we have our one-to-one calls.

Jeff Bullas

00:36:06 - 00:36:40

So a lot of this sounds very hands on and almost custom built, but using your framework. So is there any way in which you can scale it yourself? In other words, because the thing about coaching generally, if it's face-to-face and customized, is that you gotta show up all the time and it's hard to scale. So is there any way that you address that or you're happy to just doing the personalized coaching?

Kelsey March

00:36:41 - 00:39:21

So I'm not gonna lie. My favorite part is the personal coaching. I mean, that was a lot of when I worked in the psych field. I did group counseling. That was one of my favorite parts. I did one-to-ones with my patients and you would get, you were assigned a number of patients each shift and like I did my one-to-ones with my patients. I loved that aspect of it and I love the aspects that I have of it now. But you, they're sweet but I have a lot of systems in place. I have so like when it comes to those daily check-ins and things that's all automated, those messages go out. I do have conversations then with my clients, some of my clients aren't, they don't need as much hands on. They'll just give me an update and that's it. Some other people need a little more hand holding or to work through some thought processes or they've got like a difficult conversation. They have to have both the clients that they need to work through and plan out. So there is some hands on with that. In terms of scalability. If I were to just do what I'm doing now. Absolutely not. It's not scalable. There are a couple different options for coaches, one is going into the group coaching. I can do group coaching. It's not necessarily my favorite, maybe I'll do that every now and again for people who can't afford my one-to-one service, but the routes that I will probably go and I'm in the midst of starting to build is a course for the different areas that personal performance, the operational performance. And that would be a course that is very easily scalable for people to buy that. They don't necessarily need that one-to-one coaching for me. They can then buy that after the fact if they want help going through the course and then products. So I have a crap ton of like templates and how to guide and all the stuff that I use, the tools I use with my clients, both on the personal side and the operational business side. I have a whole document with all of that. So whenever I'm like, going in and creating my client's focus guide, I have the bare bone outlines of all the different techniques and stuff that I copy and paste over and I just tweak it to be personal to what they specifically need. So I can absolutely, there's a very, very big industry around E-products and so I could do things like that and I could scale that and that's just a matter of having the marketing campaign behind it. And that to me is very scalable and I'm and I can and I like that as a segway. And then also I have other interests like I wanna be invested in a little bit of real estate and some in investing. And that also brings me another pathway of money.

Jeff Bullas

00:39:21 - 00:39:47

Cool. So, in terms of generating leads, so a lot of people want to know how to, as a coaching business, how do you generate leads? So it sounds like you use a bit of content marketing, you create content on Mondays and Fridays. How's, what are some of the ways you generate new clients, leads and then the clients, what does that look like?

Kelsey March

00:39:48 - 00:41:07

Yeah. So, this was something that was totally out of the scope of my expertise like getting into the online world. I was like, I know I'm good at what I do. I can coach, all that, didn't know jack shit about marketing and prospecting, didn't know anything about that. So I did hire, I've worked with a couple of different coaches. I've had one coach who I had for about a year and a half. I have a new coach who I've been with for a little over six months. And the things that I've learned is so the different avenues I have is cold prospecting and then I have my organic content. So I put out consistent content. Another really wonderful avenue is guesting on other people's podcasts. You guys are great, wonderful free marketing for me. And then there is the cold prospect thing that I do, which I also have a full system for. So, right when I started, I was focusing on Facebook where I was reaching out building a relation and that my, I don't pitch, I don't sell in the DMs, I know they're that it's saturated right now with a lot of people who are like, hey, buy my service and a cold DM and all that stuff. My approach is more so building a relationship, getting to know people who are in my network, who I end up getting connected with and becoming friends with on Facebook.

Jeff Bullas

00:41:07 - 00:41:10

So a referral marketing then, really.

Kelsey March

00:41:11 - 00:41:59

No, it's like I'm having conversations with people, but my conversations are around really genuinely trying to get to know them and their problems. And if there is something that I can help with, I do offer to hop on a call to help them figure out a strategy, a discovery call, a performance audit if that would be helpful and then I move them to a sales call after the fact. But I don't come write out and like just send a message and say, hey, buy my stuff. Like that's not how I work with my cold prospecting. I also do that on LinkedIn. I'm now branching into cold email and we'll also be launching a challenge soon which will be a new funnel for me to bring in new people who want to get a taste of some of the stuff I do. And then if they want to, they're more than welcome to work with me to continue to implement what they learn.

Jeff Bullas

00:41:59 - 00:42:06

Alright, cool. And, do you work on a monthly retainer fee? How does it work?

Kelsey March

00:42:07 - 00:42:36

Oh, yeah. So yeah. So, typically my one-to-one program is a four month container and that is just a flat fee for that. If they want to continue with my services after the fact and not doing just that bulk kind of container, we will do kind of like a retainer style payment if they want to keep me on, and it's just adjusted based on that.

Jeff Bullas

00:42:37 - 00:43:09

Right. Okay, cool. So, what's next for you? Is it to build a course? Is that what you want to do? Or you obviously enjoy the personal coaching. So that brings you joy, obviously, that's where you, it feeds your soul by the sounds of it to me because you did that with one-on-one in, you know, for mental health in the hospital. So what's next for you in terms of, is it the course? Is it, what is it?

Kelsey March

00:43:10 - 00:43:59

Yeah. So right now, I just mentioned I'm working on a launch of a five day free challenge. It's unleash your CEO potential. So it's where it's focusing on that personal performance for business owners for that very first tier of what you need to work on to kind of get organized and ready to focus on then your operations and to scale. So I'm gonna be launching, it's a free five day challenge that I'm gonna be putting out, I'm just in the midst of putting everything together for that now. So it's still very fresh. I actually haven't told, you're the first person I've told about it. So, yeah, that's, it's, I'm just expanding my own marketing. That's the first thing that I'm doing and then I'm gonna move into more of that like, evergreen content and I'm gonna build that course and some other kind of free e-products.

Jeff Bullas

00:43:59 - 00:44:28

Alright, cool. So, just to wrap it up, I typically ask all my guests to tell me what brings them joy. In other words, what feeds their soul and I'm not talking about just trivial joy. I'm, you know, I think, what brings you deep joy, Kelsey? I'd be intrigued by what helps you achieve that.

Kelsey March

00:44:29 - 00:46:37

Yeah. So, gosh, I think the thing that brings me really deep joy is like genuine connection and just to elaborate, I think our world right now is the most connected it's ever been via social media, online platforms, all of that. But I also think it's the most disconnected that it's ever really been in terms of actually forming personal relationships when traveling, especially if you're in a community of other travelers. What I found is that, you're having such a unique experience of living in another culture and trying to figure out daily life in another culture while working and navigating a language you don't know and food that's unfamiliar. And so in the travel community, the bullshit conversations get cut out right away. It's not like, you know, oh where are you from? Like, you know, the weather is nice today. It's more about talking about deep intimate things about our life that we're all just trying to work on ourselves. Most people, some people don't get into that. But a lot of people in those communities are open to those conversations and are willing just to like kind of talk about life. And I find that in like the more I guess you could say, stable communities of people who are not like moving around and experiencing a lot of new things, people are really closed off to having conversations, getting to know other people sharing parts of themselves that it's hard to share. But I think that's what, you know, really gives us that connection in the world. And like that brings me joy. I like getting to know people and understanding who they are and sharing a little bit about me and my story. Maybe my story could help them, maybe their story could help me. It's all about finding those other perspectives that can like, help you to continue to build whatever you want to build in your life. And I think that starts with genuine connection.

Jeff Bullas

00:46:37 - 00:47:08

Yeah. And I think that is the evidence, scientific evidence is seen on that, which is a Harvard’s 85 year old study, which you may have heard of, which interviewed people every two years and they discovered that the number one thing that brought happiness was that quality human connectedness, relationships. So you've just summed up the Harvard study. There you go.

Kelsey March

00:47:09 - 00:48:08

Yeah, definitely. You know, just to share one little tidbit because I talked a lot about resiliency. You know, the number, I wrote an article about this, but one of the key factors to resilience like to cultivating, to learning how to be resilient is a lot of time. There's been, there's a lot of studies around this and it's about seeing outside perspectives from yourself. So it's about engaging with people outside of your immediate circle and engaging with people who are doing things differently and especially if they offer some small token of support or adjuster, like they give you a piece of gum or a piece of candy, like whatever, something just kind and nice and seeing how other people are living and acting, it really helps build that resilience that I think most of us are just looking for because life can be hard. So might as well grab happiness wherever you can, which is why my company is all about that. It's habits to happiness.

Jeff Bullas

00:48:09 - 00:49:25

Well, Kelsey, thank you very much for sharing your insights about life and your journey and it's been awesome and I look forward maybe to meeting in real life somewhere in the corner of the planet and having a deep conversation about life. I don't think we ask ourselves enough questions and we don't reflect enough. We're too busy quite often to have to really, I suppose, live a considered life. Because the other thing too is that we mentioned right at the beginning was is that designing your life is actually important. In other words, instead of letting life run you, you run life. And I think that's what we've got to consider much more as humans. But we get trapped in at being dragged into the busyness of life and forget to live life and work out what really does bring us joy and then choose happiness. So, thank you very much for sharing what you choose to be happy and fulfilled and it sounds like you're bringing joy to other people's lives and businesses and creating success. So, thank you very much for sharing your wisdom. Thank you, Kelsey.

Kelsey March

00:49:26 - 00:49:28

Yeah. Thank you so much for having me. It's been great to be on the show.

Jeff Bullas

00:49:28 - 00:49:29

Thank you.